The Design HQ Team
Design HQ was established in 1989 by principals Kelly Brooks and Ian McSorley. Our permananent, full-time staff (Kate Nisbet!) is complemented by a team of affiliates and contractors that are so great to work with, we even invite them to parties. This means we ramp up quickly for large projects, give you the best talent — and keep it lean.

Win-win! Here's a snapshot of our team…

Kelly Brooks, Principal, Designer & Art Director

Kelly has worked as a graphic designer since 1981, when she completed her BFA in visual communications design at the University of Alberta. She began her design career at the architectural firm of Bell, Spotowski where she designed and produced their corporate communications and presentations. She left Bell, Spotowski in 1982 and moved to Victoria where she worked for the Ministry of Lands, Parks & Housing designing and illustrating public information material including brochures, posters and signage.

Kelly moved to Vancouver in 1985 and joined McSorley & Fudge as a senior designer. Kelly and Ian established their current design firm Design HQ in 1989.

Kelly’s design work has been recognized with numerous awards of excellence, including Judges Choice; best of category and best of show. From 2001 through 2006, Kelly worked on a number of contracts as Art Director with Go Direct Marketing (now RMG Connect), where she designed DM print collateral for TELUS, VanCity, and Johnson and Johnson (LifeScan).

Through 2006-08, Kelly designed and art directed DM at Cossette Communications/Blitz for Allstream and Manitoba Telecom — one of which achieved a response rate over 26%!

Recently Kelly has designed DM for the University of British Columbia. Her alumni fund raiser achieved a remarkable 31% increase in revenues over the previous year's efforts and won a 2009 Bronze for Direct Mail Advertising for Fund Raising in an international competition organized by CASE (Council for the Support and Advancement of Education).

Ian McSorley, Principal, Designer & Creative Director

Ian completed his BFA, VA with a major in drawing and painting at the University of Victoria in 1978. Ian’s first commercial projects included architectural renderings for developers and architects such as Arthur Erickson and technical illustrations for product developers such as Phil Nuytten (International Hard Suits), MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) and Mobile Data International (MDI). The scope of this work expanded to include graphic design and marketing communications.

Ian’s work has been recognized with numerous awards for design excellence – particularly for the development of corporate and product identities. More importantly, the long-term clients he works with have been recognized with awards for design and marketing excellence – the ultimate accolade.

During his 10 year working relationship with Gemcom Software International, he designed their corporate identity; corporate communications; annual reports; all product packaging, documentation and sales collateral; signage and exhibit systems. During this period, Gemcom received the BC Export Excellence Award for excellence in marketing innovation as well as the Canadian Export Development Award of Excellence.

Ian has given seminars across Western Canada as part of a product launch program for software developers.

His product design skills have garnered an EMA award of excellence for consumer electronics.

Ian held an executive office with the Graphic Designers of Canada for 3 consecutive years and he currently chairs the marketing committee of the Commercial Drive Business Society.

Kate Nisbet, Design and production

Kate articled with Design HQ during the summer of 2003 as the career prep component of her design program in Ontario. She graduated top of her class in 2004 and moved to Vancouver for a full time position at Design HQ in August of the same year.

Kate has produced numerous publications in multiple languages for Biocontrol (a bulletin on Ecological Pest Management); international newsletters, a corporate profile, and capability brochures for SRK Consulting; and a comprehensive information kit and project case studies for the Canadian Wind Energy Association. Kate is proficient at image processing and all functions of our CMS program. She handles the majority of our CMS training. She did all of the image work, including animations; all site content entry, linking and shopping cart configuration for an e-commerce site with over 340 products and more than 600 pages of content. She is also responsible for all of our Flash production.

Marna Macdonald, Finance and Accounting

Marna has kept our finances in order since 1988 (1 year prior to establishing Design HQ). Her excellent communications skills have helped build an amicable rapport with auditors, suppliers, clients and even Design HQ directors – who would usually rather focus on creative challenges than best accounting practices!

Marna has worked as payroll supervisor for several large organizations including B.C. Children's Hospital, where she supervised 4 employees in the computerized payroll involving 3 unions (HEU, HSA, & BCNU) for a staff of 1,600. She processed related payroll summaries and reports; prepared payroll journals for accounting and reconciled GL payroll tax accounts; prepared statistical reports for CRA and WCB; reconciled T4's for submission; processed CSB's and United Way accounts.

Since 2002, Marna has worked part time with the Technology Support Team in the Faculty of Dentistry, University of British Columbia as a Financial Administrative Assistant. She also handles bookkeeping for a variety of small businesses. We're fortunate to have Marna's commitment and attention to detail for the past 2 decades. She has kept our finances running smoothly.

Associates

Steven Toews, Principal, S5 Media Inc.

Steven has 13 years experience in the Design and Information Technology Industries and has provided consulting services to many businesses, typically those dependent upon IT and web technologies, though not necessarily in the tech sector.

Steven is focused on web design and specializes in content management systems and advanced flash applications. He enjoys sharing his knowledge and providing the best solutions for the job. Steven has also played important roles in the startup of other businesses in the nutraceutical and hospitality technology industries.

Steven’s company, S5 Media and Design HQ have collaborated on website projects during the past few years.

Salim Virani, Programmer & Analyst

Salim is an Internet project specialist. He has 13 years of management and development experience in the IT industry with adjuvant experience in the direct marketing, telecommunications and adult education industries.

His projects have included leading roles with industry innovators such as MyDomain and Zzeem. He has also spearheaded many projects for industry leaders such as Go Direct Marketing, CB Richard Ellis, Aston IT Group, Nestle, Kraft, Scott Paper and TELUS, all of which produced astounding returns.

His experience is varied including directing roles in a large marketing firm, on large-scale IT projects and managing roles of a sales team, a call center and a computer school.

Salim develops all new additions to our CMS; does the scripting, trouble-shooting and server configurations for those web sites.

Kelly Chen, Web Production

Kelly is a graduate of Capilano College's IDEA program where her student work was featured in Applied Arts 2007 design annual.

Kelly has helped us with several web projects for clients with multi-national operations. She has imported several stand-alone websites to our content management system to simplify administration and allow clients to take advantage of shared content and other enterprise-level solutions.

Brooke Baxter, Production & Pre-press

Brooke has over 20 years of experience in the prepress, print and advertising business. She started her career serving an apprenticeship in one of the largest prepress shops in Vancouver and then worked in various agencies producing print work for clients such as Intrawest, TELUS, LifeScan, Western Union, HSBC, and VanCity.

With her traditional background and extensive agency experience as a production artist and studio manager, Brooke provides Design HQ with a higher level of production capacity when needed, and partners with us in professional and accurate development and execution of our production files.